Appletree Answering Service

Appletree hosted its second Team Leader Summit in Wilmington, DE from Dec 6^th through the 9^th.  Team Leaders from every Appletree location attended the summit where they heard from Appletree CEO, John Ratliff, who outlined his vision for 2010 to improve the Customer Experience.  Mr. Ratliff also discussed making learning the central theme for the coming year.  In addition, the managers took part in sessions that focused on team-building, coaching, motivation, and Customer satisfaction. It was a tremendous success, and plans are already underway for a 2010 Summit!

As part of continuing education being offered at Appletree, all employees are participating in hour long listening sessions.  During these sessions, they review random calls and ask three questions of each call:  1) Did the caller leave with a positive impression of the business we represent? 2) If you were the customer, would you feel your caller was taken care of; and 3) If you were the owner of Appletree would you use this call to reflect what your business does.  Feedback is given for each of these areas, as well as coaching tips to enhance the call center agent’s call taking skills.  These sessions are used as part of the five (5) hours of continuing education required for each employee within Appletree.

Appletree was recently recognized both regionally and at the national level for their continued success and growth.  For the 6^th straight year Appletree received the Philadelphia 100 award, being ranked as one of the 2009 fastest-growing, privately-held businesses in the Philadelphia region.  Rankings are based on verified revenue growth and Appletree was honored on October 1^st at the Annenberg Center on the University of Pennsylvania Campus. 
Nationally Appletree was named to INC.’s 2009 list of fastest-growing private companies in America.  Appletree has received the INC award every year since 2004.   

J.A. Dava has been a strategic partner with Appletree for approximately 5 years.  In addition to his very successful real estate company in Ohio, J.A. also represents a service for real estate professionals called the “Home Buyers Scouting Report”.  JA is a much sought after speaker and travels the US constantly training agents and brokers about adding to their “Funnel”  with the Home Buyers Scouting Report.  He refers Appletree every time he signs up a real estate professional on his program.  Appletree answers and returns phone calls from people inquiring about a property and offers them a Home Buyers Scouting Report.  For all that accept this free service, it is estimated that 10-20% that end up buying a house will use the agent that provided them the scouting report.  Outside of work, two of J.A.’s colleagues are currently suffering from lymphoma.  He is running his first marathon to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma society in honor of them.  The marathon is in Columbus, OH on October 18th.  To help J.A. raise funds for research and awareness, please visit: http://pages.teamintraining.org/coh/columbus09/jdavay. 

The common goal for Sales and Marketing is to identify the best prospects and then connect quickly. A recent MIT study shows that if you can catch someone within 5 minutes after they fill out a web-to-lead form, you are 80% more likely to connect with them. If you wait 30 minutes, that likelihood drops to 10%.  Below is a summary of results from a survey by Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a study by Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT, on the topic of Lead Response Management.Kellogg Lead Response Management Survey OverviewOver the course of four months, Dr. Oldroyd surveyed hundreds of companies that drive web leads to their web sites. The survey represented a broad distribution of company size (ranging from “under $10 million in annual revenue” to over “$1 billion in annual revenue.”)  22 survey questions focused on identifying WHEN the best time was to efficiently contact web generated leads, and HOW to generate web leads that qualify and close at optimal rates.

By Brendan B. Read, Senior Contributing Editor of TMCnet.com

Strong partnerships based on excellent, caring, service pays off. Just ask the American Red Cross (ARC) of the Delmarva Peninsula — which serves over 1 million people in Delaware and six counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore — and teleservices firm Appletree Answering Service.  The ARC has renewed its customer care partnership with Appletree Answers: a relationship that began back in 2000, whose longevity, observers say, is rare in teleservices.

The ARC offers assistance 7/24 to local families when disaster strikes. In 2007-2008 it provided emergency disaster relief after 198 fires, floods and other disasters and offered comfort and emergency needs to 295 families in crisis. The organization teaches lifesaving skills such as first aid, CPR and water safety and disaster preparation training. Over 20,000 people were trained on lifesaving while over 10,000 received disaster education in 2007-2008.

The Red Cross Lifeline program is another invaluable service the local chapter provides. Lifeline, which is a personal emergency response system, offers independence to seniors and other vulnerable people while giving peace of mind to their family and friends. More than 450 seniors and other vulnerable citizens became subscribers between 2007 and 2008.

In addition the ARC chapter helps local military families communicate during emergencies, such as when a family member needs to reach their relative in the military such as a death in the family, severe accident, or illness.  In 2007-2008 it delivered 1,000 emergency communications messages and other direct services to/for active duty, Reservist and National Guard personnel and their families. The Delmarva Peninsula is home to Dover AFB in Dover, Del. the state capital. This air force base is home to the 436th and 512th Airlift Wings which carries personnel, materiel, cargo, and sadly, the remains of those who died in the service of their country.

Appletree Answering Service provides ARC with customer care for all of these services and more, including card activation calls (when a victim is need of funds, the ARC gives them a card for use and it handles the activation) and media inquiries. It has 49 call center agents who handle their calls. Each agent assigned to them is individually trained on the account by a manager or supervisor. 

The firm says its value to the ARC is the ability to demonstrate empathy with very difficult calls: people who have lost their homes in a fire or parents calling for their children in the military to report a death. The call center agents accurately take the necessary information needed and efficiently provide it to the on-call caseworker for the American Red Cross.
“The reputation of the American Red Cross of the Delmarva Peninsula has been built over the past 100 years through caring and concern for those individuals in crisis,” states Daniel Valle, CEO, American Red Cross of the Delmarva Peninsula. “Many people don’t realize the multitude of services we offer until they are in need. To ensure the highest quality customer support for our community after-hours we rely on our dedicated partners at Appletree Answers to be the friendly, helpful, and empathetic voice available 24/7.”

“Our work with the American Red Cross is more than a business to business arrangement,” added John Ratliff, founder and CEO of Appletree Answers. “We consider the Red Cross a strategic partner and are honored to be trusted by an organization where every call is critical.”

Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor.

If you have ever: Ordered from a catalog, purchased a concert ticket or  called to complain about an order or product , then you have interacted with a “Call Center”!  Of course, Appletree operates multiple call centers around the USA, however, our activities extend well beyond the handling of your calls. 

In addition to handling your tele-communication needs, Appletree offers a full solution menu which includes project support needs.   By eliminating your long distance phone charges and alleviating your staffing needs, Appletree will save your company significant time and money. 

Flexibility and quick response to our clients’ changing needs set us apart in the call center industry.  Whether your needs are re-occurring or singular projects, let Appletree accommodate your communication needs in the following ways: 

• Schedule, Cancel, or Confirm Appointments
• Customer Service follow-up calls
• Application Processing
• Customer Surveying
• Event and Conference Registration
• Ecommerce – Order Taking/Order Processing
• Cross Sell and Up-Sell Programs
• Live Web Chat
• 24-Hour Help Desk/Technical Support 

Whatever your company’s needs are, Appletree’s comprehensive corporate capabilities are available, accessible and affordable. Contact an Account Specialist today at 800-237-2810 to discuss any of your project needs.

20 times return on investment in less than a year; record retention of customers in a commodity business during a severe downturn; highest morale in the history of the company; and the best two quarters, ever, in terms of profitability. The key? An initiative called “Dream On.”

“You’re either a giver or taker,” explains John Ratliff, founder and CEO AppleTree Answering Service, a 350 employee inbound call center company based in Wilmington, Delaware with call centers in 12 locations throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. “Givers tend to get stuff back while takers fight for every last nickel and they are always the ones, in the end, who are struggling - they never have abundance.”

Huge Problem

The transformation of Ratliff’s 13 year-old firm began during a quarterly offsite as the company prepared its plan for the coming 3rd quarter of 2008. “Employee attrition was the ‘critical number’ we chose to focus on,” recalls Ratliff. “We were running an industry average 95% turnover of our frontline employees while our non-exempt turnover was just 3% — clearly we were doing something right for one group but not the other - and just being average has never been our goal.”

Ratliff knew that the company’s growth, through 13 acquisitions in six years, had made it impossible to create a cohesive culture. And he had a nagging feeling that Appletree needed to be more than just a place for his employees to come to work. What he didn’t realize was how painfully out of touch he and his executive team had become with their frontline employees.

“We were in our planning session brainstorming ways to create a better experience for our employees when Lisa Phillips, our director of operations, asked how we could become more like ‘Make a Wish’ for our employees,” notes Ratliff. Over the years, Appletree has generously donated to charities and the “Make a Wish” foundation had always been their favorite.

Human Solution

So they put together a small team of people to flesh out the idea and decided it wasn’t about identifying their hard luck employees. Instead they simply wanted to know one thing, in a perfect world, that each of their employees would like to have happen in their personal lives. Critical to the request - there were no restrictions or caveats. And final decisions would be made by a secret committee.

Dreams

Titled “Dream On”, they announced it on their intranet and supported it with printed collateral and posters in all of their offices. Not surprisingly, like most new initiatives, the responses were slow to come in, but the requests that did trickle in began to provide the executive team a glimpse into the lives of their people.

“It was nothing short of shocking to discover the situation of our frontline employees,” remembers Ratliff. “Just like you do demographic research on your customers, we started to really get an insight into the challenges of our employees and the kinds of situations they had inherited.”

Dream Requests

Health was a staggering shocker for the executive team as well as challenges caring for an elderly parent or grandparent. Others found themselves caught on a financial treadmill, having been out of work for a couple months before joining Appletree and needing a couple thousand dollars to get caught up.

“And I was surprised by the car situation - how a change in a bus route can force our employees to change jobs or how a previous employer may have changed job hours which no longer matched public transportation schedules,” explains Ratliff. Seventeen employees simply wished to own a car.

Living in a car

“One of the first requests we got was from a manager of one of our employees,” recalls Ratliff. Through a perfect storm of events, including the employee’s husband getting in a pretty serious accident and losing his job, the couple and their child found themselves living in a car, unbeknownst to Ratliff and his executive team. So the company put up the deposit money and worked with a landlord to get her a decent lease. They also provided furniture and gift cards to help the family get back on their feet.

“We meant to do this privately but the employee let a lot of people know and soon it was on our intranet and that dramatically increased submissions,” adds Ratliff.

Contact

The company intranet has been a powerful vehicle for linking their employees across 12 sites and creating a sense of community, witnessed by the companywide assistance that poured in when Hurricane Gustav hit Houma, location of one of their call centers. Employees stepped up to the plate and shipped clothes, food, and other necessities within 48 hours to their fellow employees. “It was an instant injection of positive to our culture.”

Access

Helping eight people with living situations like bills and rent; sending two employees on their first honeymoons leveraging Amex points; flying a mom over Christmas to see her daughter in the Navy; providing four employees with personal computers at home; and fulfilling the dream of a 90 year old employee to take her first family vacation with her mentally challenged daughter are just some of the dreams they’ve made come true.

Sick

“What CEOs don’t realize is the access you have that other people don’t and how you can create opportunities for people you never would have thought of,” reflects Ratliff. This was driven home when one of Ratliff’s employees, who had been with him from the beginning of the company, asked for help in sending her 28 year old husband, who is suffering from stage 4 Hodgkins disease, to an Eagles football game.

Through connections Ratliff had, the team picked him up in a limo, brought him down to the field and sat him in the wives section for the game. After the game each player came out of the locker room, greeted him, and signed a game ball, including his favorite player who took his game shirt out of his duffle bag, signed it, and asked him to walk him to his car.

“This cost me zero dollars - just some time to access my network,” notes Ratliff. “It’s not about throwing money at problems.”

Results

In turn, the company has had its best six months ever. First, turnover dropped instantly once “Dream On” was launched, where today it sits around 30%. At a cost of $5k to replace an employee, there’s already been a net $1 million contribution from a program that has cost $50,000 so far. And for the cynics that would say the terrible economy would have driven this rate down anyway, customer turnover, which should have been high, is also the lowest in history due to a highly engaged and upbeat workforce. And all of this has resulted in the two most profitable quarters in Appletree history!

“The overall sense of belonging - of being something bigger than themselves or their individual sites - and part of a community has been the biggest change I’ve seen among the employees,” concludes Ratliff. “And for me, I feel more connected, now, to our entire group, and the company has become much more human to people.”

Verne Harnish

Appletree Answers is excited to announce that we are now offering online bill pay.  Our customers will have the ability to pay their bills via credit or debit transactions with Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and Discover! 

Feel confident that your payment will post to your account within one business day.  Simplify the invoicing process and schedule your payments ahead of time.  Eliminate mail delays and never again pay late fees! Manage your businesses from a tax perspective by printing out an instant payment receipt, as well as, receive payment confirmations via email.

Thinking green, Appletree is moving full steam ahead to provide as many green transactions/interactions with our customers…  In addition, we are encouraging our customers to not only use the on-line bill pay feature, but reach out to get your newsletters and invoicing emailed to you.  Together we can partner to make our planet more green.

Beginning February 23rd, 2009, go to https://www.appletreeanswers.com/secure/billpay.php, it’s fast and secure!

When it comes to Customer Service, our front line agents take the prize.  Here at Appletree we are very proud of the product our agents deliver to our Customers and their Customers.  Managing the efforts of our front line staff is an elite group of individuals we refer to as our Team Leaders.  The Team Leaders’ job is to educate, hold accountable and cultivate our front line agents.

The week of January 5^th, Appletree brought in 30 Team Leaders from all of our 12 sites for an aggressive training, tour of the Corporate Office and Management Presentation sessions.  The focus was to drive home the value our Team Leaders add to the organization, while giving them additional tools to do their jobs.  John Ratliff, CEO states, “The number one way to create a culture and pass down the company’s DNA to our front line agent is to empower the people that manage their efforts.”

Several modules were developed in an effort to support and educate our Team Leaders.  Human Resources and Employee Fulfillment Directors presented on many topics to share risks, techniques and legal regulations associated with managing people.  Information Technology Directors presented on the do’s/don’ts with our systems and the Q and A session was valuable as our managers began to share best demonstrated practices.  With the recent roll out of Salesforce (our Customer management tool), our Team Leaders were granted access to the system with a very detailed process to assist with consistent documentation and Customer Service.

The bulk of the time was spent with the Operations Directors, who focused on industry specific education.  Opening the lines of communication and introducing this level of management to one another to help with overflow traffic, sharing of resources and training techniques on difficult accounts. 

The investment back to the company and the service expectations that our Customers can expect from this experience are simply put, worth it!  Measuring employee turnover, Customer attrition and quality will be the tangible evaluation and reward.